Tech Acquires Wind Tunnel For Research Facility

Tennessee Tech has acquired a wind tunnel from a General Motors test facility in Detroit, Michigan to improve its research capabilities.

Chief Government Affairs Officer Terry Saltsman said the tunnel has a wide variety of applications that can be used for many different kinds of students and research fields. Saltsman said they were originally preparing to install an older wind tunnel but decided to switch once this one became available.

“The difference between them is like a 1970s car versus a car today,” Saltsman said. “It’s just so much better in terms of the way it handles the wind load, the way that you can gather data with it. It really helps propel us to an all-new level of research.”

Saltsman said the wind tunnel will be dismantled in Detroit, brought down piece by piece, and then reassembled at the former TAP Publishing building Tech owns in Crossville. Saltsman said researchers from universities across the south are already reaching out to discuss using it once it is operational.

“It’s going to be about a year before it’s up and running probably, at the quickest,” Saltsman said. “There will be things that happen. We know that, but we’re prepared to accommodate those issues and bring this to a successful completion probably about the late fall, early winter of next year.”

Saltsman said the tunnel will have select uses for undergraduate students but it will greatly broaden the range of possibilities for graduate students.

“At the Master’s and PhD level you can see and hear the excitement that this will bring,” Saltsman said. “And several people would like to implement it and integrate it into their own research efforts as they work toward their PhDs.”

Saltsman said the tunnel and the research opportunities it brings will allow Tech to expand its academic services to the Crossville area.

“We’ve had interest from a number of groups, particularly in the engineering arena, to go over there as we build up that research effort and have classes over there,” Saltsman said. “So we expect that things will happen in Crossville that we’re not thinking about yet.”

Saltsman said Tech will have to pay several million dollars to prepare the Crossville site and move the tunnel down from Michigan.